Capt. Roosevelt Johnson of the Los Angeles County sheriff’s department Santa Clarita Valley station said he met with members of the Masonic Fraternal Police Department on Feb. 4. Two were wearing black jumpsuits with Masonic Fraternal Police patches and stars on their collars. One had a handgun on her utility belt, Johnson said. Brandon Kiel, deputy director of community affairs at the California Department of Justice since July 2013, was there too, wearing a dark navy business suit. The three told Johnson they were opening a new Canyon Country police station.

They met for 45 minutes, Johnson said, but he grew wary when they couldn’t answer questions about where they derived their authority, or jurisdictional issues. He was left confused and suspicious — so much so that he immediately ordered deputies to pull station surveillance video so they would have images of the visitors. He also assigned detectives to check them out.

Apparently, though, it took almost three months to establish probable cause that these were bogus cops, write the warrants, and make the arrests. Probably because they weren’t Muslim.

David Henry was charged with multiple misdemeanors and three counts of felony perjury. He is scheduled to be arraigned May 21. Brandon Kiel is charged with six counts of impersonating an officer and unlawful use of a state ID. Tonette Hayes was charged with four counts of impersonating an officer. Henry, Hayes and Kiel had allegedly introduced themselves to police agencies across the state, though it is unclear why. A website claiming to represent their agency cites connections to the Knights Templars that they say go back 3,000 years. All three are members of a religious philanthropy group that does charitable work in South Los Angeles. Los Angeles County prosecutors said the whole effort was a ruse, though for what purpose remains unclear.

Why such scorn for these knuckleheads? Because anyone with any time at all in the American police industry soon realizes that virtually every law enforcement agency in the country is a masonic police department. Police organizations in the United States –as in almost all of the Anglophone world– essentially function as the armed wing of freemasonry, helping to maintain and reinforce its social influence within civil society. How? By providing intelligence about potential political adversaries, by neutralizing or harassing opponents, and –most importantly– by selectively enforcing (or not) those laws that might otherwise overly burden the lifestyles and economic opportunities of their fellow masons. American police officers aren’t all freemasons, but many are, and promotion to upper echelons in the command structure is often contingent on masonic membership and service to the order.

Therefore, the very first police chief visited by a “Masonic Fraternal Police” representative is going to make his very first phone call to the local lodge master, asking, “WTF?!?” Then he’ll “take it to the next level” at the District Council, and then up to the state’s Grand Lodge. In triplicate and then some, because there are parallel York Rite, Scottish Rite and Prince Hall organizational structures to navigate –all the way up, and all the way back down, link by link. And no one can be certain that it’s not actually a secret initiative sanctioned by the “speculative degrees,” so careful inquiries must be circumspectly made. No wonder it took three months.

Wait, I’ve changed my mind! These three musketeers aren’t idiots, they’re fuckin’ geniuses: it’s a low-tech, old-school, distributed-denial-of-service attack on a key communications network of the ancien regime, designed to sow confusion and erode trust. This is a classic masonic tactic dating back to at least the 18th century. How much did the Chinese pay these guys? They got a bargain, because the telephone call record data just mapped out the entire masonic leadership structure for all of California. Let’s wait and watch to see how this intell will be leveraged. Should be interesting.